


Paralysis

by sightandsound3733



Series: Guns For Hire AU [5]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Confusion, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:17:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2510720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sightandsound3733/pseuds/sightandsound3733
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Epsilon knows he's living in hell. He just doesn't know what he did to deserve it or what the hell his captor's want with him now. He's soon to discover that this is just the start of a whole new nightmare for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paralysis

One of the first things taught to children in schools was how awful a fate it was it get stuck in a plague cloud. It’s gruesome, and there is a never ending debate about whether or not it’s too graphic and horrible to show to children, but the topic never gets banned because they need to know.  
  
They need to understand the dire consequences of coming into direct contact with any part of that noxious gas.   
  
There are videos, photos, documented accounts of what it feels like to breathe in the gas, how it expands through the bloodstream, replacing every bit of oxygen with it’s toxins. The burns are described in horrifying detail, the way the skin eats away, disintegrates and falls to pieces, melting off of flesh and bone, leading to an agonizing death.   
  
One of the first things kids are ever taught is that the worst thing that could ever happen to a person is to get caught in a plague cloud.   
  
Epsilon now knows that’s a fucking lie.

He would welcome a plague cloud right now, would walk bare into its midst and take a deep fucking breath. That at least was a horror he knew, one he understood. Not the hell he was being ripped through now.

He had no idea where he was, or how long he’d been there. Days, weeks, months, who the fuck cared? It’s not like it mattered anymore with how often he was passing out in pain, screaming and fighting and crying. He’d lost track of time pretty quickly, only was able to gauge how long he’d been out by how long they spent poking and prodding at him after he woke up.

It was always the same. Blearily coming to attention, always with the same metallic taste in his mouth, too sharp and unnatural to be blood. It coated his tongue and teeth, invaded every corner and crevice and it was quickly becoming horrifyingly familiar. Within moments of him waking up the door would open and three helmeted people walk in.

They never speak to him, barely look at him. He’d given up after day one of pleading with them to let him go, to explain what was happening, what he did to warrant this torture without a single response. They checked monitors surrounding him, checked to make sure his binds weren’t cutting into his skin, or that the track marks and cuts that lined his arms and chest weren’t infected. So fucking kind of them, to make sure their pet experiment wasn’t getting sick.  
  
After they take their checks, writing everything down on their fucking clipboards, they draw blood from one of the many new little holes in his body for them to pick from and they cap off vials. Some days it’s one or two. Others, it’s as many seven. Seven tiny little fucking vials filled to the brim with his blood.

Those are the days when he thinks first of Sigma. The days when he focuses in on the dark dark red of his blood. Dark like Sigma’s eyes.

Epsilon spends a lot of the time that he’s awake and lucid thinking about his siblings. Worrying about them, about whether or not they were here, in another room, hurt and weary and sick like him. He worries about Omega trying to fight and getting hurt, of Sigma or Delta struggling to get free. Of any of these bastards laying a hand on sweet Gamma or sunny Theta. His stomach churned painfully at the thought of Eta and Iota, scared and crying, like he was.  
  
The same fucking thoughts, day in and day out, the same worries and fears running a worn path through his mind, spinning in circles, unraveling his brain. All the same, it was all the same all some dream or trick or lie—a nightmare.   
  
He’s always snapped out of this circular thought torture by the opening of the door again and the sharp echo of evenly paced footsteps across the floor. Epsilon grit his teeth at the sound. They only ever belonged to one man, the only one to ever approach him without a helmet on.   
  
“Good morning Epsilon.”  
  
He doesn't respond, doesn't look toward the tall, statuesque man with the sharp eyes and the deeply lined mouth. His voice drawled, dragged with a deeply routed accent that had to be from the upper colonies in the South, yet it was crisp and clear. He stood there in parade rest, shoulders tight and strong and Epsilon keeps his tired eyes narrowed in on the patch of concrete beneath his prison that was dotted and stained with blood. His probably. Who the fuck knows what they did to him when he was unconscious.   
  
There is a sigh. Short, impatient, disappointed.   
  
“I thought we had worked on your manners, Epsilon.” His skin crawls as there is suddenly a hand on his chin, gripping him tightly and pressing into old bruises, to the point of it hurting and forcing him to meet those green eyes. The color is startlingly close to Delta’s own stunning shade of green, but these were hard and unforgiving in a way that Delta’s never were. That harsh mouth twisted and Epsilon wished he had the strength to twist away, to fight back. “You will address those who speak to you with respect. Do I make myself clear?”  
  
Epsilon shakes in his grip, pain spiking through him with each prolonged second of that strong grip pressing into his skin, and he nods once, disgust burning through him.   
  
“Good.” The hand on his chin is gone. Epsilon feels like sobbing in relief, but he can’t even manage that anymore. “Let’s try that again, shall we? Good morning Epsilon.”  
  
“…Good morning Director.” His voice is weak, cracking before he can even get the words out. He sounds pathetic. He hates it. Omega raised him to be strong, to be someone who could stand tall and be a pillar for his younger siblings to depend on, not the crumbling mess of a man he had become.  
  


“That’s better,” The Director nods, observing Epsilon for a few long moments. Epsilon looks away again, this time in shame for conceding and giving in so quickly. He was too tired to fight. The Director doesn’t bother with him for long, looking to one of his helmeted assistants. “Vitals report?”

This one was a woman from when Epsilon could tell out of the corner of his eye, the one that most often drew blood into the vials.   
  
“Subject is stable. We increased the dosage and it reacted well with his neural interface. The processing finally stabilized and soon it will be predictable enough to engage it with other elements.”   
  
“Very good,” He nods, looking back to Epsilon, eyes trailing over him. “And the readouts on the emotional outputs of the formula?”  
  
“We haven’t been able to test it accurately,” the woman sighs, hugging her clipboard to her chest, looking over Epsilon now as well. “The subject is generally unresponsive. We have tried almost everything to elicit the response we want, but nothing seems to trigger it correctly.” There was a tilt to her head that looked almost pitying as she surveyed him and Epsilon meets the gaze of her visor, glaring with as much heat as he can manage.   
  
“I’m not gonna jump through hoops for you,” he manages, voice stronger, dripping with all the malice he has festering inside of him. “You’re insane if you think otherwise.”  
  
Neither of them seemed to pay him any mind, which wasn’t anything new. The Director turns to his assistant. “If you have the samples ready, we can proceed with today’s test.” She gives a swift nod in response and turns to walk toward the door, even as he speaks to Epsilon. “Despite your rudeness, we do have a surprise for you. Someone you know quite well.”  
  
Fear rips through Epsilon, like ice shot through his veins. Someone he knows? The only thing he could imagine was one of his siblings. He’s frozen in silence as the man man walk calmly to the door and opens it.  
  
“Would you be so kind as to join us, Counselor?”  
  
Epsilon goes rigid and still as a new person joins them. He is wearing a helmet, bland and grey like all the others he’d seen here. The man is lithe and tall, and he cradles a clipboard in the crook of his arm. He reaches up and removes his helmet and Epsilon is staring at the face of a man he had not seen in years.   
  


“Hello Epsilon. Such a pleasure to see you again,” Counselor Davis smiles blandly at him, setting his helmet aside in a careful, calculated movement, like all his movements were and always had been.   
  
Five years. It had been five years since Omega had turned eighteen and thrown the Counselor from their lives, since Omega and Delta boxed up the study that had been the man’s home on the top floor of the house, had thrown away their one and only tie to their parents.

This was the man that had run the household for most of their lives, who handled the bills and the checks from their parents, their fucking faceless absentee parents who couldn’t care enough to spend more than a month with their children in all of their lives, content to send the babies along to the house with a nanny and a note. This was the man that Omega hated, that spent years calmly explaining that Omega was hallucinating the idea of an older brother, of Alpha, the brother they lost. This was the man that Epsilon never wanted to see again in his entire life.

Yet here he was. Fucking  _smiling_  at him.   
  
“What… what are you doing here? What’s going on?!” Epsilon demands, looking between his former caretaker and his captor. “What the fuck is going on?!”  
  
“Language, Epsilon,” The Director barely spares him a glance, while the Counselor walks closer to him, his dull eyes trained on his former ward restrained to the chair. “The Counselor is an old colleague of mine.”

“What?!” Epsilon looks to the Counselor, feeling sick and angry, his fists going tight on the arms of the chair. “Explain, now!”  
  
“Calm down, Epsilon,” The Counselor smiles still, speaking in his calm monotone. “There is no reason to get worked up.”  
  
“No reason? Are you fucking high?! I have every reason to get worked up!” Epsilon spits back at him, tensed against his bindings, the zip-ties starting to cut into the blisters on his wrists, not that he noticed when they started to burn. “You— You sold me out to him? To this fucking monster?!”  
  
“Sold you out? Oh Epsilon no, that’s not the case at all.” He shakes his head at the boy, smiling and speaking to him like he used to when Epsilon was a child, asking questions about their parents. Slow, simple and condescending. God he fucking hated this man.   
  
“Then what is the case? Why am I trapped here with your needle happy friend? Huh? If you didn’t sell me out then what the fuck happened?!”  
  
“You’ve inherited Omega’s temper it would seem,” The Counselor sighs. “A shame. You were always such a sweet boy.” He looks to the Director for a moment before looking back to Epsilon, smile back in place. “I did not betray you Epsilon. I was simply doing my job.”  
  
Horror washes over Epsilon as the implications of the hit him. It was only made worse by the little upturn of the Director’s mouth, not quite a smile, but more of a self satisfied little smirk.   
  
“Y-you’re lying! This… this is another dream!” It wasn’t, he knew it wasn’t, but God he wished it was. He shuts his eyes tight and pushes away the thoughts that they’d been watched for years, observed. How every fucking thing he wrote on his clipboard had been to be sent back to this sick fuck… all so they could end up where he was now.   
  
Images of his siblings in his position sent a new panic through him. No… no no this wasn’t happening, this couldn’t happen, they couldn’t be here in this damn place, they couldn’t be hurt like this. The thought alone has him struggling against his bonds with a new fervor. Pain erupts in blinding bursts on his wrists and ankles, warm blood trickles over his wrists, spilling onto the floor to join the stains.   
  
“Let me go! Let me go you bastards! I swear to fucking God if I get free—When I get free I’ll kill you!” He jerks hard enough to feel the joint in his shoulder pull unpleasantly, his eyes eerie blue and blazing as he snarls at the Counselor.   
  
The man only smiles in return.   
  
There is a flurry of activity at his side, too quick for him to process what was happening as he mindlessly and foolishly tries to fight his way free of his bonds. All he knows is one minute there is blinding panic and fury, and toxic concoction burning icy cold in his chest, and the next there are hand on him, pressing him down and a syringe is coming dangerously close to his body.  
  
“Get off me! Don’t fucking touch me! Let go! Let me go!” He’s screaming himself raw, thrashing under the hands that bound him to the chair.   
  
Epsilon gets just a glimpse of the liquid in the syringe vial before the needle breaks his skin. It’s blue, bright iridescent blue that shines and Epsilon feels like it would hurt to look at head on.   
  
They inject the liquid into a spot on his neck, quick and clinical, and Epsilon screams. It burns. He can feel it moving through him, can literally feel it swelling and creeping through his veins, seeping into his bones, into all his joints and muscles. It starts to lock tight and he can only choke and swallow back the rest of his screams, and try to figure out what’s going on.   
  
“W-what did you d-d-do?” He chokes out, stammering as a wave of nausea rips through him, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow as he gasps and tries to breathe, even as his lungs feel as though they are collapsing. “What did you give me? I…I can’t feel my legs, I-fuck! What did you fucking do?!”  
  
“Paralytic nature reaction time is better than we had anticipated,” The Director notes calmly, sounding as though he was making banal comments about how much rain they’d gotten the night before, his assistants moving and writing, all quiet murmurs and a flurry of activity.   
  
“He’s already stopped struggling,” The Counselor notes, being the only one to stand at the Director’s side. “Would you like me to proceed, sir? Before the next stage takes hold?”  
  
There is a pause, where the Director just watches Epsilon as he panics, feeling quickly seeping out of his arms and fingers now, already completely gone from his legs. Epsilon knows he must look petrified, and he is, God he really fucking is, what the fuck was happening?!  
  
“No,” The Director speaks up after a few dragging moments. “No, we’ll wait. He’ll succumb soon. We can monitor his REM activity before moving onto the next stage after the dose fades.”  
  
“Yes, Director,” The Counselor dips his head before moving closer to Epsilon with a smile. Epsilon’s jaw has locked shut, his tongue falling limp and useless in his mouth, breath coming quick and shallow through his nose. If he had control over his voice or his limbs, he would have shouted and squirmed when The Counselor reaches out to brush Epsilon’s limp hair out of his face. The action was gentle, dripping with a familiarity that makes Epsilon's blood boil and makes him want to scream.   
  
“Relax, Epsilon,” The Director is at his other side as his vision starts to falter, starting to go fuzzy at the edges, quickly starting to fade to black. “Trying to fight it will only make the serum cling tighter to you. It’s better for us all if you just give up.”  
  
Epsilon glares weakly at him, head spinning, eyes burning. He feels too cold and yet he burns. His vision blacks out to the sound of their voices, talking over him about him, he’s not sure. Soon he can’t make out the words, they’re falling apart to gibberish in his ears before everything clouds over and he passes out and sinks deep into his mind.  
  
Chaos. Blindingly bright, fragmented chaos.That is what his mind has become.  
  
He’s home now, in the kitchen of the house… but it’s different than he last remembers seeing it. Beautiful red roses adorn the table, stripped clean of their thorns. Delta sits at the table, fingers working and weaving the blooms into a delicate crown of roses, but this Delta is young, no more than seven, his dark hair short and his green eyes wide and happy. At this young version of his older brother’s side… stands Alpha.  
  
Epsilon feels an ache that runs through his whole body, and the image before him shakes, as though it were unstable and then quickly settles. Alpha, is there, with his dark hair and pale skin, and those strange silvery eyes that are kind when they settle on Epsilon with a laugh.   
  
“Aw, come on Ep,” he chuckles, picking up a rose so he can trim the stem down for Delta. “Lighten up. I know you love the sunflowers, but I’m always going to like the roses best.” Alpha smiles, the edges of it too sharp when compared to his warm, kind eyes. The rose is red, too red, unnatural as he offers it out toward Epsilon. “Smile, Eppy. Everything’s fine, don’t look so sad.”   
  
Eppy.  _Eppy_ _._  God that name. He hasn’t heard that name in years, not since Alpha disappeared up in smoke one day. To hear it fall from those lips, to hear his brother’s voice again after so long is just… amazing. But something’s wrong. Epsilon wants to run forward to take the rose and hug his brother but something is wrong. It takes him a few moments of the stilted silence that follows Alpha’s words to realizes that the rose in his hand is bleeding.   
  
“A-Alpha…” Epsilon chokes out, his eyes locked on the oozing petals of the rose, bleeding like it had been dealt a wound. “Alpha the rose…”  
  
“So pretty, isn’t it?” Alpha asks, his eyes seeming to mist over now as they focus in on the flower as well, holding it up closer to his face, the blood running down his arm. “Pretty little rose.” The petals start to fall off the rose, falling like droplets of blood. It’s not until the petals hit the floor and splatter that Epsilon can see that the rose isn’t bleeding… it’s made of blood.  
  
Alpha looks back to him and there’s a dark bruise along his brother’s jaw now, his lips quirked to the side in a sad little smile. “Epsilon,” he says, voice rough and broken, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Epsilon shuts his eyes tight and cries.

**Author's Note:**

> References made to "Plague clouds". This is a direct reference to the GFH constructs for the open AU, directly from synnesai, the creator of the AU.


End file.
